Talk:Nothing in the Nighttime
I can remember "6+", and I can remember "The Great Unknown", but, aside from the fact that the aliens in this story lived in trees, I can't remember a damn thing about it. TR 01:24, September 28, 2011 (UTC) :There had been some sort of brachiasaur(sp?)-like hellbeast living in their forest 1000 years earlier (so right around our time). It would knock over even the most massive trees to get at their leaves, just as the African Elephant knocks down much smaller trees for the same purpose. In a forest inhabited by an arboreal civilization, the destruction of the largest trees simply won't do, so they hunted these animals to extinction, and their descendants celebrated this as one of their society's greatest achievements ever. :1000 years later Jennifer McTitties shows up with her crew and the aliens ask the humans to help them figure out why their forest is shrinking. Jennifer figures out that these hellbeasts had been an integral part of their forest's ecosystem. Now that they're no longer around to shit out the largest trees' seeds along the forest's periphery, new trees sprout up much closer to their parents, which means more competition for limited water and soil nutrients. McTitties proposes that they import some cousin of the extinct hellbeasts from some other part of the planet thousands of miles away. The aliens' rulers declare that these new hellbeasts are not to be hunted, and the problem is solved (though the problem of people's homes and public places being destroyed by rampaging brachiasauri (sp?) returns). It helps that this new species doesn't have tusks; the original species's ivory was highly sought after and in the millennium since their extinction had become an obscenely expensive commodity, so the temptation to poachers of having a new source of ivory would likely have proved too much. ::She actually paraphrased it to "Alimentary, my dear Watson", hence the atrocious pun ending. ML4E 19:33, September 28, 2011 (UTC) :::Did she now. I remembered no pun in the story, so that had me a bit confused. Turtle Fan 00:43, September 29, 2011 (UTC) ::The pun is about all I remember about the story. I had forgotten what the problem was. I only remembered the natives were pissed that oversize beasties were eating things that they shouldn't. And I only remembered that because it led to the pun ending. ML4E 20:55, September 29, 2011 (UTC) :McTitties's colleagues ask her how she figured it out and she says "Elementary, my dear Watson," and explains that she's been reading Sherlock Holmes because her literary interests have been expanding. So she's into thinking deductively now, that's her new thing, and apparently that's enough. (Makes you wonder how the story would have gone if her current non-SF interest had been Chaucer or Tolkein or Tolstoy or Margaret Mitchell or. . . . ) She has no training in biology or ecology but she did vaguely remember learning in school about the symbiotic relationship between many trees and the fruit-eating animals whose excrement helps their reproductive processes along. (I also remember that from school, appropos of nothing, and also remember feeling so guilty about not eating the seeds of various fruits that I started throwing apple cores and whatnot into the backyard so I wouldn't be accused of failing to live up to my part of the bargain. Maybe the fact that this story dovetailed with an earlier memory is the reason I still remember it?) And no, they did not do exhaustive studies to make sure that the new invasive species they were introducing would not have disastrous side effects on the rest of the forest ecosystem, so the story's really just about one short-sighted instance of eco-rape being replaced with another. :It was definitely the weak link in the collection. "6+" was really a charming little piece of sci-fi, and was also the only one of the three that lived up to the book's premise which was that McTitties would use her knowledge of Golden Age SF to find solutions to real world (well, real to her, I guess) problems. "The Great Unknown" had its flaws but was intriguing enough in concept and exciting enough in plotting to be worthy of feature presentation status in a collection like that. But this was just a snoozefest. Turtle Fan 03:27, September 28, 2011 (UTC) ::"McTitties"? :::I know it's not her real name but based on that cartoony cover it really does seem to fit better than Logan. And there's something to be said for amusing nicknames (even if they're not amusing to anyone other than me), especially when talking about a subject that offers very little enjoyment on its own. Turtle Fan 05:02, September 28, 2011 (UTC) ::And none of that rings a bell. I can see why, too. Thanks for trying. TR 04:01, September 28, 2011 (UTC) :::Any time. Turtle Fan 05:02, September 28, 2011 (UTC)